by Patricia Lee Sharpe
Rule one for young writers is this: whenever possible, use the active, not the passive voice. For example, which of the following is more powerful? (Or, if we’re talking about a fictional character, which version makes the character seem more interesting?)
1. She was given the opportunity to excel.
2. She grasped the opportunity to excel.
Most readers will care more about the girl who takes her future into her own hands. Wow! What’s she going to do? Above all, readers will probably respect her. She’s got character and determination. And so the reader reads on.
I was reminded of this active/passive admonition when I began to notice the use of the term “enslaved people” for those who, until recently, were called “slaves” in America. What a powerful transformation! People aren’t born as slaves. They’re forced into servitude. When it comes to the lives of such unfortunates, the passive voice clearly applies. They're compelled to do what they do. It's also true, however, that enslaved people manage to subvert their masters by various sorts of non-compliance. In essence, a “lazy slave” is actually a very smart person, slyly acting while acted upon.
Which brings me to a sleight of language that might make a difference as we contemplate the plight of coal miners and other workers in dead end industries. They can languish in victimhood or learn accessible new skills. Servicing wind turbines, perhaps. Or installing solar panels. Or, with a lot more education, learning to make them.
Economists and well-meaning social workers tend to think, in such cases, of retraining. This poor guy needs to be retrained, they say, making him the object of the verb not the subject. So, I ask you, which of the following formulations would give him more dignity, dignity being a critical human need?
1. This guy was retrained in courses at the community college.
2. This guy retrained himself by attending courses at the community college.
In short, maybe change (and retraining) would be more palatable to technologically redundant workers if they were characterized as adults acting with intentionality and not as losers to be pushed passively into the future.
But this is even more vital: real jobs must be available once the retraining has been accomplished. Continued unemployment leads to desperation, alienation, susceptibility to Trrump-like authoritarian promises.